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-I've widened the scope to include other area municipalities
-Dallas county decided to aerial spray poison, with the city of Dallas Mayor making the decision himself without the city council vote or public input
-Fort Worth decided to do truck spraying. However, this does not diminish the quotes from the Fort Worth staff. Boerner is no longer with the city and there is immense pressure coming from somewhere (that is ripe for investigation).

We must continue fighting! We do not want this to repeat next year or even a month down the road. The more signatures this gets, the more media attention it receives. The LA and NY Times have already written about it. Keep getting the word out and don't give up!

This website is meant to supplement the petition for Dallas (and other area municipalities) to stop the ineffective and dangerous mosquito spraying and instead, channel equivalent funds and efforts to implement safer and proven practices for mosquito prevention and eradication.

This site is a work in progress. Please email us if you have any suggestions or would like to help out.

Here is the text of the petition:

The city of Dallas sprays the poison Permethrin, a deadly poison to MANY insects. That includes beneficial insects such as honeybees and ladybugs as well as natural mosquito predators such as dragonflies. Many beekeepers around Dallas have reported their bees have been killed. In addition, fish, some of which eat mosquito larvae, are killed by this poison. There is also other wildlife to consider such as bats, birds, and geckos, which all prey on mosquitoes but are harmed by the spraying.
The city of Fort Worth has not sprayed for mosquitoes in over twenty years. While Brian Boerner was Fort Worth’s director of Environmental Management he stated, "While spraying for mosquitoes may provide a short-term response to the nuisance biting of the adults, it does nothing to affect the larva present in standing water sources. Moreover, the spraying of chemicals also has the potential of contaminating our waterways, killing the beneficial fish and organisms that feed on mosquito larva, adding harmful volatile organic chemicals to the atmosphere — a precursor chemical to ozone formation — and providing a potential inhalation or ingestion hazard to residents who are in affected areas shortly after spraying occurs.”
Scott Hanlon, assistant director of Code Compliance, told the Fort Worth city council, “Nobody puts a spraying program in place as the solution for West Nile virus. Nor is it effective in killing 100 percent of mosquitoes in any given area. Spraying only kills adult mosquitoes that are active during the time that chemicals are being dispersed. They don't impact larva.”
We want the city of Dallas to stop this practice of indiscriminate, costly, and ineffective poison spraying. This appears to be nothing more than a move to placate the public. It is not actually helping the mosquito problem nor cutting down on instances of West Nile virus. Dallas needs to:
-Educate the public about standing water (even minuscule amounts) and issue citations when needed-Encourage the use of BT granules and dunks-Introduce mosquito larvae-eating fish in appropriate bodies of water-Push for individual responsibility — avoiding the outdoors at dusk and dawn, covering skin, using personal mosquito repellent
Dallas does do some of the above, but not to the extent it could and should. If all of the effort and money that went toward the poison spraying were instead diverted to the above, we would be in much better shape and would actually be addressing the problem.

It might seem like we could get back to normal but we cannot give up. The city of Dallas is planning to heavily spray Aqualuer 20-20 from trucks. In many ways, this is worse than the aerial spraying. Of course, aerial spraying sounds scary, and it is, but truck spraying is more concentrated and closer to us. However, its efficacy rate in killing mosquitoes is poor like it is with aerial spraying.

We are doing some things behind the scenes that we cannot disclose yet.

Tuesday, August 21, 7:43 pm
Dallas will not be sprayed tonight. But the city has said that they will be stepping up their ground assault. I assume that means truck spraying rather than boots on the ground as it should be.

They have released two tip sheets (where were these at the beginning of mosquito season?):

Eden's Organic Garden Center/CSA Farm is calling for volunteers to help them cover the crops to protect them from the airplanes dropping poison.

Here is the request:

CALLING ANY AND ALL VOLUNTEERS!!

What do you do when the State / County decides to douse your farm with pesticides? You have a party!! A cover the crops party that is!

The city was unable to fly over last night - oh darn - but has scheduled to resume Sunday night. That gives us time to get more things done here beforehand.

Bar-M-Ranch Grass-Fed Beef has graciously offered to bring tarps over here to combine with the plastic I have in an effort to get our crops covered before the now scheduled aerial spraying TOMORROW night! We'll spread it out over the actively growing, and now blooming, melons, squash, tomatoes and peppers.

He's bringing (grass fed) roast beef for sandwiches for us for lunch (and will pick up yummy organic Fresh Life Foods bread). You can byob or I'll have ice tea and water.

I expect this to take us no more than 2 hours with enough help (6 or so people working in teams).

NOTE TO ASTHMA or OTHER CHEMICALLY SENSITIVE FOLKS -
It rained pretty heavy out here last night clearing the air nicely, and I don't seem to smell the aqualure 20 20 that was used in the back neighborhoods anymore today. However, if you are at risk for respiratory problems, please bring a mask. I don't want anyone getting sick like I did Thursday night.

I don't know how Dallas thought it could keep its citizens informed of their poison spray plans when they couldn't even do something simple like educate the public on preventing mosquitoes and personal protection. They are not updating their own website! http://www.wfaa.com/news/health/west-nile or http://cityhallblog.dallasnews.com/ but even that has conflicting info. I have no idea when or where is getting sprayed tonight. It seems like my neighborhood will be sprayed tonight because according to this map, I wasn't last night due to the rain. Good luck reading it. It was on city hall's facebook page...but not on their website.

Also, what I want to know is why are they starting to spray so early?! 9:00pm is too early! Many people are not home at 9:00! Especially on a Friday night! Honeybees are not in their hives! At both the Garland and Dallas City Hall Briefings, we were told the spraying would happen in the middle of the night. Since when is 9:00 pm the middle of the night?!

Here are two videos I shot last night showing that honeybees are not in their hive that early.

This was 8:12 pm. If I'm to get them ready by 9:00, I have to start that early. But I was unable to because they were still very active!

This is the hive after I covered them just after 9. I don't know how I'm going to get it done tonight before the planes start to bomb us.

This morning I found some dead bees outside of their tent. So either the city lied and there is drift and/or the company doesn't have an idea of where they sprayed, or the bees left early this morning to forage, came into contact with poisoned flowers and/or water, and died on their way home.

This operation is being completely mismanaged. The city clearly doesn't consider us important. Make your voice heard and email your city council and mayor. Also include the link to the petition to show how much it's growing!

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We want Dallas and other area municipalities to stop the ineffective and dangerous mosquito spraying and instead, channel equivalent funds and efforts to implement safer and proven practices for mosquito prevention and eradication.